NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

The 2016 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series season came to a dramatic conclusion Sunday at the Auto Club NHRA Finals in Pomona, with both world and event champs being crowned on a hot day at Auto Club Raceway at Pomona.

Jason Line in Pro Stock and Jerry Savoie in Pro Stock Motorcycle clinched the season championships but not event wins as Tommy Johnson Jr. (Funny Car), Greg Anderson (Pro Stock), and Matt Smith (Pro Stock Motorcycle) will exit the season holding the final event Wallys of the season.

Here’s a look at the day’s top stories:

1. Line, Savoie win season championships
Jason Line in Pro Stock and Jerry Savoie in Pro Stock Motorcycle collected NHRA Mello Yello season championships in dramatic finishes Sunday. Line won his third title by reaching the final round, putting it out of reach of teammate Greg Anderson. Savoie clinched in the second round when rivals Eddie Krawiec and Andrew Hines both went down to defeat.

2. Kalitta wins all-team Top Fuel final
Doug Kalitta, who finished second in Top Fuel points, didn’t leave empty-handed as he defeated Kalitta Motorsports teammate J.R. Todd in the final round by a mere .008-second. The victory was Kalitta’s first at the season finale.

3. Johnson takes second place with Funny Car win
Like Kalitta, Johnson finished in second place on the season but left Pomona with some consolation hardware after defeating John Force in the final round.

4. Championship denied, Anderson settles for event win
Greg Anderson was locked out of championship contention when teammate Jason Line reached the final alongside him, but Anderson got the satisfaction of winning the event, just as he did at the season opener in Pomona.

5. Smith breaks win drought, scores first for Victory
Matt Smith hadn’t won an NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle Wally since the penultimate race of the 2013 season and broke the drought in style with his first victory aboard his Victory Gunner entry to give the manufacturer its first NHRA win.
 

Funny Car | Pro Stock | Pro Stock Motorcycle | Etc.

After a very trying Countdown to the Championship that included losing in the first round at four of the first five events, Richie Crampton, pictured with daughter Emma, and his team may have salvaged things a bit by scoring a first-round win against Brittany Force. The round-win came at a perfect time, too, because it allowed Crampton to move up one spot in the points, to ninth, where he finished the season.

One of the wildest races of the first round was the match between Tony Schumacher and Clay Millican. Schumacher smoked the tires of his U.S. Army entry early and appeared to be out of contention because Millican was well on his way down the track. However, Millican’s Great Clips car experienced some troubles of its own near the middle of the track, and a mechanical malfunction prevented him from getting back on the throttle, opening the door back up for Schumacher, who hit the gas and just clipped Millican at the stripe.

“It was very, very disappointing,” said Millican. “A spring clip that holds the throttle cable on broke. To call it a 50-cent piece is probably overstating it. It’s probably a 30-cent piece. Obviously, racing the Army car is always a big deal. They may not be the champion this year, but they’ve won enough of them that you always got to be on your game. I knew he had trouble, but we had made it far enough before this thing kind of got loose. I was like, ‘All right, step off of it, step back on,’ nothing, so now I’m coasting and like trying to shake myself in the car to make the car roll faster, trying to put my feet through the floorboards to try and ‘Flintstone’ the thing. I could hear Tony, and I could hear that he was way back. I’m getting closer and closer to the finish line, and Tony’s getting louder and louder and louder, and then, of course, vroom, he goes by. I look at the scoreboard, and I’m like, ‘We didn’t get there.’

“It’s hugely disappointing. Tony and I spoke when we got out of the cars down there, and he’s like, ‘What did it do?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know. It just quit.’ He’s like, ‘I basically had given up. You were far enough out there that I was giving up, and then I see that you’re not doing anything, so here I got back after it, and then luckily I got around you.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, Merry Christmas. That’s all I can tell you.’ I don’t want to say you get used to the way you typically lose these things, smoking the tires, whatever, but to have something as simple as a spring clip break that holds the throttle in place is very disappointing.”

During eliminations, it is common practice for drivers to try to stage as shallow as possible to get the best e.t. possible and improve their chances of getting lane choice for the following round. In the second round, that ended up creating a wild starting-line moment for J.R. Todd (pictured) and Richie Crampton. Both drivers flickered the staging bulbs while trying to stay shallow, and that threw both off.

“I’ll tell you what, that was pretty wild seeing both lights flicker like that,” said Todd, who won the match when Crampton went red. “I don’t think that I’ve ever seen that. That will catch you off guard. I mean, it makes you think that you’re dead late.”

Todd went on to finish as the event runner-up, and the great day was good for him in the points. Todd moved up two spots and finished the season fourth. This is the second-best finish for Todd, who was No. 2 in 2014.

After winning the Las Vegas event two weeks ago and moving up to second in the standings, Steve Torrence and his Capco team entered the Auto Club NHRA Finals in good spirits and feeling optimistic about closing the season on a high note. Unfortunately for Torrence, that did not happen when a miscue cost him a shot at victory in the second round against Shawn Langdon.

“There was an error made. It was just a mistake made,” said crew chief Bobby Lagana. “It stinks. You go all year and everybody works hard, and there’s so many little things that go into making these cars make a full run, and you never take it for granted, especially with the group that we have over there, but it’s just that easy to overlook the smallest thing, and the end result isn’t good. At least there wasn’t any damage. It’s frustrating, but there’s so many good cars out here.”

The early loss combined with Doug Kalitta’s win shifted Torrence from second to third in the final standings, but that result is still a career best for Torrence, bettering his sixth-place finish in 2014.

“We had our sights set on second, but that is Steve’s best finish ever, so we’re lucky,” said Lagana. “We’ve got a really good team, great owners, a family atmosphere, and nobody gets hard on anyone else. It is what it is. It’s drag racing. We’ll get ready for the winter.”

If you can’t win the season championship, the next-best thing to do is win the season finale and go into the offseason on a high note. Doug Kalitta and really the entire Kalitta Motorsports team were able to do that when he powered past teammate J.R. Todd to win the Auto Club NHRA Finals for the first time in his career.

“To win the last race, I’ve been trying to win this thing for a long time, and the history here for me with growing up watching [uncle] Connie over the years, the first race and the last race were always huge deals, so to be able to win today was huge for me and everyone on the team,” said Kalitta. “It was cool that we were both in the final and both got to run for the money. It will be good momentum for all of our teams. We ended the season with not any championships but definitely some good runs.

“Any of these races, round by round, it’s tough. The competition level out here is just incredible, so anytime you can get a win out here, it’s a great accomplishment. Just to be able to win here at the final race and run the guys and beat them today like we did, just real proud of Jim [Oberhofer] and all the guys.”

Todd and Kalitta entered raced day in the Nos. 1 and 2 spots, respectively, and they remained the cream of the Top Fuel crop through eliminations, combining to run low e.t. of each round of competition. Kalitta was the best of the first two rounds when he dispatched Shawn Reed and Tony Schumacher. Todd was then stronger in the final two rounds, including posting a low-of-eliminations 3.704 in the final. That run, however, wasn’t enough to win because Kalitta nabbed a starting-line edge of nearly five-hundredths and paired that advantage with a 3.74 to edge Todd by .008-second at the stripe.

“It was a close race for sure, and their car was running incredible,” said Kalitta. “The SealMaster car, Connie did a heck of a job with that thing. He’s pretty amazing after all these years out here tuning these cars.”

Kalitta’s win moved him up to second in the final standings. It is the fourth time Kalitta has finished No. 2, and with Funny Car racer Ron Capps finally breaking through for a title this season, that leaves Kalitta as the winningest driver in history without a championship.

“Yeah, I guess I’m still on that list. I’m sure I’ll hear about it all year again, too,” Kalitta said with a laugh when that point was brought up in post-race interviews. “I’m real proud of what we have accomplished. We’re going to give it our best, obviously, and I think we’re really making strides. I’m looking forward to seeing really what comes next year, for sure. I’ve had an incredible opportunity out here driving for Connie. We’ll just keep trying to rack it up and see what happens.”

When your opponent red-lights, that instantly means an easy win, right? Well, yes and no, and Courtney Force proved that in the first round today. Jim Campbell fouled, giving Force the automatic win, but the run that followed was a bit eventful.

“I saw that he went red, and it felt like it was a really long light. I felt like I was going to go red from sitting up there, but, you know what, I’m really proud of this Traxxas team,” said Force, who went on to record a semifinal finish and move up to sixth in points. “It dropped a couple of holes. I was driving it like this — my hands were parallel — but I was just trying to hold onto it, just trying to put any number on the board, get the car down there. We might have gotten the win early, but I didn’t want to give up because we’ve got lane choice to look for in the next round, and you never know what could happen.”

With still a relatively small number of runs under his belt, Dave Richards learns something new every time he gets behind the wheel of his family’s Funny Car, and that was especially true during the first round today when Richards found himself in a pedaling contest with Tommy Johnson Jr. Richards’ entry hazed the tires early, and he was ready to give up, but then Johnson’s entry followed suit, and Richards mashed the gas. The end result was his car getting completely sideways in what was ultimately a losing effort. (See animated gif.)

“When we smoked the tires, I was instantly like, ‘Beep,’ and then I saw him go up on the tires, so I just instantly stomped on the gas, where I know if I had more experience, I would have maybe just eased into it, not that I would have caught him, but I wouldn’t have gone as crazy as I did there,” said Richards. “I’m just glad that I didn’t hit the wall or anything. I knew I was close. I’m sure it scared a few people, but it just felt like I was in control of it as wild as it was. That makes me feel better and a lot more confident that I can drive it a little more than I used to, knowing that I can keep it under control. That’s only the second time that I’ve tried [to pedal a car].”

Though his race day ended early, Richards was still very pleased with the weekend overall, thanks to his 3.97 in final qualifying. It was his first three-second pass ever.

“I was just happy that we qualified, and I was happy, of course, that we ran a three,” said Richards. “I didn’t really care about running a three that run. I just wanted to make it fast enough to get in the race today. When it started sinking in that we just ran a three, it was pretty wild, and just to do it on the last session at the last race. It’s funny to think that we wanted to get in the threes when at the beginning of the year my goal was just to run teens and maybe a 4.0. Now, we run a 4.0 or a low 4.1, and you’re disappointed. It’s crazy think, but I’m happy to be in the three-second club, and now we know the car can do it. We can just build on that.”

Jeff Arend may not have been able to win the race, but it’s fair to say his substitution in the Patrón Funny Car normally piloted by Alexis DeJoria was a successful one. After making his first three-second run ever, Arend recorded two more, clocking a pair of 3.97s during eliminations. The first one earned Arend a round-win against Matt Hagan, who smoked the tires early.

“Yeah, this is a really great start,” said Arend. “Again, Alexis get better. The Patrón team, they’re awesome. We tried a couple things yesterday, and it didn’t go down the track, so that’s probably the first time that I went to the finish line under power. To beat Matt Hagan in the first round, that’s pretty awesome.”

Added crew chief Tommy DeLago, “Yesterday, we were pretty greedy and smoked the tires twice, so we just did everything we could to slow it down and were just hoping that someone would smoke the tires next to us, and it worked. Jeff’s definitely doing a good job. It had the front end up out there, but he drove right through it, and we’ll try to fix it for next round.”

Unfortunately for the team, the 3.97 in the second round wasn’t quite enough to turn on another round-win against Courtney Force, who posted a 3.92.

After watching cars in front of them smoke the tires and lose, Del Worsham’s team elected to do a last-minute lane swap with Tim Wilkerson, shifting from the left lane to the right one. Worsham’s car suffered the same fate as many others, smoking the tires early, but Wilkerson went right downtrack, blasting to a 3.922 that was the quickest run of the round to advance.

“Both lanes are equally good and bad,” said Richard Hartman, who assists Wilkerson with tuning decisions. “I mean, the track’s excellent. It’s just tricky. It’s really tricky, and we’re going back to notes from who knows when to try and get down this thing, but we made some good calls there. We were swapping lanes, and Tim was on the radio, ‘Do this. Do this,’ and it all worked out. That’s why he’s the man. Low e.t. of first round, man, that gave me goose bumps.”

Unfortunately for Wilkerson, he was unable to repeat the run in the following round and came up short against Jack Beckman.

When John Force rolled up for the first round, he had a different body on his Peak Chevy Camaro, a black one replacing the traditional blue-and-white one. The reason behind the switch was the contact that Force made with the wall after the finish line on his final qualifying attempt last night.

“Last night, that was unfortunate. I think it was just dark down there, hard to see, and it just got out of the groove a little bit,” said crew chief Jon Schaffer. “All we had to do was change bodies. We checked the chassis, and it looked like it just went straight there, so I think we’re good.”

The car performed quite well for Force through eliminations, carrying him to a runner-up finish that moved him to fourth in the standings, breaking up the Don Schumacher Racing stranglehold of the top spots. In fact, Force’s semifinal match with Jack Beckman was a race for position. When Force won, it moved him around Beckman into the top four.

With the Funny Car championship decided yesterday, going to Ron Capps, two big prizes were on the line today: the Auto Club NHRA Finals race Wally and the No. 2 spot in points. When the dust settled at the event’s conclusion, Tommy Johnson Jr. walked away with both of those. Johnson outlasted legend John Force to claim the event win, and his great showing, paired with a surprising first-round loss by incoming No. 2 Matt Hagan, allowed Johnson to move to second, the best finish of his career.

“You’re disappointed that you didn’t win the championship, and, you know, I let Ron win this one so I could have the next one, but this team did a great job this season,” Johnson said with a chuckle. “It’s so important to do well. You have six races to really make no mistakes, we had a bad race or two towards the middle of the Countdown, and we were a little frustrated coming in here. We knew we were better than that. We had fallen back to third and wanted to go back to second. We knew that we could get that. You want to finish strong and show them that you’re there to contend, and the guys just did a great job.

“We came in here and ran really well all weekend. They’re digging hard, so you’ve got to dig hard too, so I gave it everything I had. I’ve always wanted to win this race. I’ve won the [Circle K NHRA] Winternationals. I’ve never won the Finals, and you get two and a half months to celebrate this, so you want to end on a high note. It kind of sets the tone for the offseason, so it’s just a great day and just a great year not only for our year but all of the DSR Funny Cars.”

Johnson had a great car all weekend, qualifying No. 3 and making the quickest run of race day, 3.897, but his win today was thanks to an overall team effort. Not only did he have a quick car under him, but Johnson also drove extremely well through eliminations to help bolster his team’s bid for a win. That began in the first round when Johnson’s Make-A-Wish Dodge suffered tire smoke and Johnson had to pedal his way to victory against Dave Richards. Johnson ran the 3.89 against Robert Hight in round two, then used a .009 to .079 lead at the Tree to defeat Courtney Force on a 3.92 to 3.91 holeshot in the semi’s. In the final, Johnson again left first, this time by .005-second, and that was the deciding factor because he and John Force both posted elapsed times of 3.918.

“You’re only as good as your team, but yet you can be the problem, too. You don’t want to be that guy, so to be able to dig deep and pull one out, and the last thing I heard in the car before I climbed out was, ‘Thank you, driver,’ that’s nice,” said Johnson. “It’s a team effort, so if you can pull one out once in a while for your guys, it’s very satisfying as a driver. A lot of times people think these things are on autopilot, but they’re not. They really have become a handful to drive this year, and I love it. Everybody complains about these headers, but I think it’s the greatest thing on the planet because I love it. It actually separates some people, I think, and you actually have to drive them now. They’re not on autopilot anymore, and if you can be a factor in that, it is very satisfying.

“I’m not going to lie, if you’re going to beat somebody, it might as well be [Force]. Obviously, he’s a legend of our sport, and anytime you can say you beat John Force in a final and on a holeshot, it is very satisfying. John’s a great competitor and probably the greatest of all time in our sport, and if you can take home the Wally with him, I’m not going to say it’s not better than beating someone else, but yeah, maybe it is.”

Two-time defending NHRA Mello Yello Pro Stock world champion Erica Enders knew quite some time ago that she was not going to be able to earn a third consecutive crown, but at least she had the satisfaction of finishing the year in solid fashion by driving to an impressive semifinal finish.
 
Enders, who made the show in the No. 12 position with a 6.608, defeated No. 5 qualifier Alex Laughlin on a holeshot in the first round, 6.623 to 6.596, after a .023 to .072 starting-line advantage, and in round two, she bested Vincent Nobile, who was forced to shut off.
 
For the semi’s, Enders had her best light of the day, a .003, and looked like she might throw a wrench into Jason Lines title hopes, but her bid ended when she was forced to shut off early. “It was still a great day, and I’m glad that my guys showed that we weren’t ready to go down without a fight.
 
“We have some great plans about next year that we’ll be announcing soon, and I’m going to get up early on Monday morning to start getting ready for 2017.”

Following the lead of his KB Racing teammates, Jason Line (who won the season title) and Greg Anderson (who reached the winner’s circle at the Auto Club NHRA Finals), Bo Butner joined the action by moving from sixth to fourth in the NHRA Mello Yello standings to put an exclamation point on a very successful rookie campaign.
 
Butner gave Anderson some stiff resistance in their semifinal race as he jumped to a .020 to .052 starting-line advantage but was eventually overtaken at the finish line in a 6.596 to 6.630 contest.
 
Said Butner, “It was great being with these guys this season. They have created the perfect racing environment, from R&D at the shop to the way they race every weekend. I’m looking forward to doing this all over again in 2017."

After qualifying ninth, Chris McGaha went two rounds by defeating Kenny Delco in the opening stanza and giving soon-to-be-crowned NHRA Mello Yello champion Jason Line almost more than he could handle in a 6.605 to 6.607 contest in round two.
 
“This was a pretty good weekend that put us in the proper mood to get ready for 2017,” said McGaha. "I was really happy with the way that the car ran in the third qualifying session and was thrilled that I had the run that I did against Jason.”
 
McGaha has raced the past two seasons with his Jerry Haas-built Camaro and said that he will begin next year with a new Haas entry.

Shane Gray ended his current stint as a full-time Pro Stock driver by solidifying his hold on third place in the NHRA Mello Yello standings with a two-round performance. “I’d have to say this was an excellent weekend,” said Gray. “But when you have great engine customers like Drew Skillman and Alex Laughlin, who have made great use of our powerplants this year, every weekend is excellent.”
 
Though Gray’s primary focus for 2017 will be helping his son Tanner in his rookie Pro Stock season, Gray plans to run three national events next year. “I’ll be at the Pro Stock shootout in Las Vegas and will run both of the Charlotte national events, which will be local races for us.”

Jason Line likely will be the first to admit that he was probably the most opposed to the new Pro Stock regulations for 2016, which included switching from carburetors to EFI, limiting the engine rpm, and shortening the wheelie bars. And yet one year later, he found himself winning his third Pro Stock championship, racing under the restrictions that he had so vehemently opposed.
 
“[Teammate] Greg [Anderson] was very quick to embrace the new rules because he saw it as an opportunity to take advantage of the fact that we were starting with a clean sheet of paper and get the jump on the competition," said Line. 
 
“He finally changed my mindset in December, and we worked very hard. But although we worked very hard over the winter, all we knew was that we were way down on power from 2015, and we had no way of knowing where we stood against the competition. I was shocked by the performance advantage we had at the Winternationals and shocked even more by how long we were able to maintain it.”
 
Line won titles in 2006 and 2011 but said that this year’s title is the most meaningful because “I had to face so many more challenges this time around.”

Greg Anderson lost his bid to win a fifth NHRA Mello Yello Pro Stock world championship to his longtime teammate and expert dyno operator Jason Line by a minuscule margin of three points, and yet he was all smiles at the end of the day. Anderson won the event by defeating Line in the final via a .016 to .044 holeshot, 6.580 to 6.570, to score his 86th national event victory, which moved him past Bob Glidden into second place on the NHRA all-time Pro Stock win list.


Said Anderson, “To break Bob Glidden’s record is fantastic. That was something I never even dreamed of thinking about and never wanted to think about. It’s just surreal. He was a hero of mine, an idol of mine.
 
“It was a great day. I did all I could do today. The only thing I can kick stones about is that I didn’t do a good job in qualifying. I messed up in Q2 and lost three points to Jason. Those three points were a big three points. That’s what the decider was. But it was still a great fight, a great fight all year. We had some great battles, and in the last half of the year, the rest of the class caught up and got involved. We were forced to dig in and regroup when we started the Countdown with no point advantage from the 700- or 800-point lead we had in the regular season."

The final tallies show that Anderson and Line combined for 16 victories at the 24 events on the NHRA schedule. This is the second-best number of Pro Stock team triumphs, exceeded only by the 19 recorded by Anderson and Line in 2004. During that season, Anderson had a 15-4 edge over Line. This year, the spread was more even, with Anderson and Line each recording eight victories and six runner-up efforts.
 
”I can’t be sad,” said Anderson. “I can’t complain. Jason is a great racer. And yes, I hired my own assassin, but that’s why I hired him. I knew he’d be good. I knew he’d be bad to the bone.”

The sight of Pro Stock Motorcycles going off the end of the racetrack is not all that common, but during the first round of eliminations, Chip Ellis became the second rider to do so, following a similar incident experienced by Jerry Savoie on Friday. (See animated gif.)
 
Ellis said that he had “zero brakes” when he tried to slow down after defeating LE Tonglet in a 6.86 to 6.98 duel.
 
Ellis drove into the sand with his bike in an upright position and jumped off before it ran up against the net. Ellis was not hurt and initially hoped that he could repair his Junior Pippin Trucking ’11 Suzuki for the second round, but he said, “There was just too much damage. The front forks and the front wheel were both bent, and there were a lot of other things that we would have had to take off of our other bike."
 

Steve Johnson had the distinction of outrunning No. 1 qualifier and eventual 2016 NHRA Mello Yello world champion Jerry Savoie in round two, 6.890 to 6.897, but he lost on a .013 to .035 holeshot. 
 
Said Johnson, “I’ve always had what I felt was a pretty badass bike, but very rarely was I able to find it at the track with the tune-up. So we were pretty happy to be able to run with Jerry on that run. Jerry and his team make a pretty good barometer from which you can gauge your own performance.
 
“I’m really happy for Jerry that he won the championship. He has shown me that as a rider, tuner, businessman, and everything else that he has the total understanding of what it takes to be a champion. I am very proud of him.”
 

As if the Pippin Trucking team didn’t have enough trouble with Chip Ellis’ wild ride into the sand trap, Melissa Surber suffered the frustration of losing her first-round contest against Steve Johnson with a red-light start of only .003-second.
 
Adding salt to the wound, she handily outran Johnson, 6.869 to 6.930. Said Surber, “I felt like I had waited until the light was full yellow before I left, but I saw the red just as I went by the Tree. Still, I knew I had to try to make a good run so that we could have some positive data to work with, so I was glad to see my time.

“I had a similar red-light start like this, a .002 foul against Chip recently. I feel bad today, but I should feel better by tomorrow.”
 

Based on their tremendous record, few expected that the Harley-Davidson V-Rod entries of Andrew Hines and Eddie Krawiec, both contenders for this year’s NHRA Mello Yello world championship, would lose in the second round.
 
Defending champion Hines, who qualified fourth with a 6.856, was outrun by eventual event runner-up Angelle Sampey, 6.879 to 6.912, and never seemed to be running at his full potential during the weekend.
 
Said Hines, “To tell you the truth, we had the bike detuned for the fourth qualifying session to make sure that I would stay on the opposite side of the ladder from Eddie because it was our game plan to be in the position to meet each other in the final. But when we tuned up for today, we just didn’t go far enough to get back into the window of maximum performance.”
 

Eddie Krawiec had by far the better-running Harley this weekend; he qualified just .003-second behind polesitter Jerry Savoie with a 6.828 and ran low e.t. of the first round, 6.850, to best a red-lighting Shawn Gann.
 
Krawiec came back in round two with a 6.871 that was very impressive for the warm track conditions, but his .063 light enabled Matt Smith to win with numbers of .029 and 6.912. “That’s racing,” said Krawiec after the run. "I got the bike down the track pretty well, but you can’t be having a light in the .60s, especially in the second round. It didn’t feel like a .60 when I left, but the time slip said differently, and I wasn’t able to capitalize on my performance advantage.”
 
After his defeat, Krawiec graciously congratulated Jerry Savoie on his championship campaign. “Jerry did a great job this year. He did what he had to do. Even if he had lost that close race to Steve Johnson in the second round, he still would have been the champion [because of the narrow points lead he had built in qualifying].”
 

This was the final race with Star Racing for Angelle Sampey and teammate Cory Reed, who will field their own team next year. And so it was very gratifying for Sampey that she ended her second tenure with team owners George and Jackie Bryce with an impressive runner-up finish highlighted by round-wins over defending champion Andrew Hines in the second round and newly crowned titlist Jerry Savoie in the semi’s.

Sampey said, “I am very proud to be able to beat racers like Andrew and Jerry, and I was so happy for Jerry that he won the crown. This was almost as good as our Englishtown win where I managed to beat Jerry and both of the Harley riders. This was a real good way to gather some momentum for the offseason.”
 

If you’re only going to win one race in a season, many racers seem to most enjoy winning the final contest, and that was the case for Matt Smith, who logged his 18th victory by defeating longtime rival Angelle Sampey, who red-lighted with a -.020 light in the final.
 
Another major highlight for Smith was his second-round defeat of Eddie Krawiec, which knocked him out of contention for the NHRA Mello Yello championship. Said Smith, “The second round was huge for us. To beat Eddie Krawiec, he’s a great competitor. [The Harleys] are No. 1. To put him on the trailer and to tell him, ‘You know what, you can’t win the championship this year. We just defeated you. To capitalize on all that and to win the race was very big for us.”
 
“We’ve had a fast bike,” said Smith. “But man, we’ve had a lot of electrical problems and transmission issues. We finally solved that about four races ago. We kind of struggled with our tune-up in qualifying, but it came around today. We were fast, and I did my job on the Tree. The Lord was with us. That’s all I can say. To give Victory their first win with NHRA was huge. Now we can go forward for next year. We’ve got new bikes and new motors coming, and we’ve also got two more riders, a guy and a girl using our engines next year, and that will help us gauge our performance. So if they are way faster than us, then I’ll know I’m doing something wrong.”
 

Smith credited his team for his victorious day. "Everybody says that they have the best crews in the world,” Smith said. “But my guys have stuck with me in a great way. Nobody has complained about the long hours. Most of the times, we’re the last one working at night. We run three to four bikes out of our camp. We’ve got a couple of crew guys, and they go way above and beyond in doing their job. And my wife, Angie, is doing the fuel injection and helping me tune it. Lucas Oil came onboard with us this year, and Nitro Fish has been with us forever. I can’t thank everybody enough for all their help.”
 

The SealMaster NHRA Track Walk prior to the start of eliminations allowed fans to walk on the actual racing surface of the famed Pomona track. Leading the way were Funny Car heroes Ed McCulloch, Tom McEwen, Robert Hight, and "Jungle Pam" Hardy.

The champions of the NHRA Hot Rod Heritage Racing Series were saluted during the pre-race ceremony.

Legend Tommy Grove was honored as the local hero as part of NHRA’s 50 Years of Funny Car celebration.


John Force congratulated “Jungle Pam” Hardy after it was revealed Sunday morning that the “Jungle Jim” Liberman ’73 Vega was voted the top Funny Car in NHRA history by NHRA fans. Force’s ’96 Castrol Firebird finished second. [Story]


Newly crowned Funny Car champ Ron Capps was welcomed to the stage and warmly congratulated by his peers in the class after finally winning his first championship.
 
Jerry Savoie and his White Alligator Racing team celebrated after clinching the Pro Stock Motorcycle world championship in the second round. [Story]

Drivers in the NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series also competed for event titles at the season finale. National champ Joey Severance (pictured) added to his incredible year in Top Alcohol Dragster with another victory, and Dan Fletcher collected career win No. 99 in taking the Super Stock crown.

Final-round results:

Top Alcohol Dragster
Joey Severance def. Cody Perkins

Top Alcohol Funny Car
Doug Gordon def. Shane Westerfield

Comp
Brian Hyerstay def. Ralph Van Paepeghem

Super Stock
Dan Fletcher def. Bill Skillman

Stock
Bob Gullett def. Jeff Strickland

Super Comp
Zach Meziere def. Dick Vander Meer

Super Gas
Brad Pierce def. Ed Olpin


The Mello Yello event champs, from left, Greg Anderson, Tommy Johnson Jr., Doug Kalitta, and Matt Smith, celebrated their victories at the season finale.

After a confetti shower (above), 2016 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series world champs Antron Brown, Ron Capps, Jason Line, and Jerry Savoie were congratulated by Mello Yello’s Al Rondon (below). 


Friday's notebook
Saturday's notebook